Sorry to ask.

I have read somewhere amongst my many photo magazines that I have but why is it on a night when I am using my 70-300 zoom lens, fully open does my D3200 shutter button not register a photo?

I found that sometimes I zoom out to say 280 it will take a photo but on many other occasions I have focused and zoomed only to keep my finger pressed on the button but no photograph will be taken?

I know there is a reason why but I can not remember what I have done wrong.

Thank you in advance.

Lee.

Your camera's shutter-release mode is probably set to "focus priority" which means you can't take a shot if you don't have focus-lock. Look for the focus confirmation dot in the viewfinder when taking your shot; if it's not illuminated, you don't have focus lock. You can adjust the shutter-release mode such that you *can* take a shot without focus lock, but you may find you're getting a lot of blurry photos because confirming focus lock will be on you.

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Yeah, surely we would want our photos to be in focus. Focus priority seems a very good thing.

But you said "at night", so the question is, can it find focus in the dim/dark night? The green dot in bottom left of viewfinder comes on when it finds focus. If no green dot, then focus priority will not trip the shutter.

If it cannot focus in the dark, you can use manual focus (turn AF off), and focus it like you want, and the shutter will work.

Live view can be good for that, because then you can zoom the LCD image way big, to better see the points you want to manually focus on. For example, if aiming at stars, there is no hope of focus otherwise.

Thankyou.